Book Review: The Alloy of Law by Brandon Sanderson (Whitney Finalist)

In all fairness, it's hard to pick up reading a series right in the middle. Judging the Whitney's, that's exactly what we're often asked to do. And in terms of making the events of the previous three Mistborn books understandable to a new reader, Sanderson does a great job. His story is interesting, his prose is tight, and his steampunk world is definitely intriguing. In The Alloy of Law, Waxillium Ladrian, an otherwordly Bruce Wayne, whose superpower is his ability to manipulate metal, returns to the city after twenty years of bringing justice to the frontier when his lady love is killed, and even though he tries to get civilized, he can't help but find himself saving the world at every opportunity.

As I read The Alloy of Law, I my main thought is that it would make a perfect video game. You have this world that's almost like ours, but not quite, and these guys who look like normal guys, except they have superpowers and can "power-up" when they get shot, and the fight. Oh how they fight. They fight and fight and fight and fight and fight. They fight for paragraphs, pages, and chapters. They fight in excruciating detail. I found myself just wanting to swoop my finger past all the fighting and get back to the story. But in this case, I think a lot of the story was the fighting. So if you're a fan of steampunk, or the other Mistborn novels, or of video games, I think you'd love this book. But for me, it was more of a challenge than the other Sanderson books I've read in previous years.